In response to growing market concerns over data security and GDPR compliance, Astronomer, the open-source data engineering platform, has launched its Enterprise Edition, allowing for easy Apache Airflow deployment in a secure environment. Earlier this year, Astronomer announced the first managed Apache Airflow offering (available through its SaaS data platform). Enterprise Edition provides the same feature-rich access to Airflow, but through a customer's own Kubernetes cluster. Astronomer Enterprise Edition customers get full access to all source code for the platform, and can therefore modify and extend it to suit their needs while keeping all data inside their own virtual private cloud (VPC).

"GDPR and other data security concerns are forcing organizations to weigh the risks of sending customer data to external vendors. We are seeing an acceleration of interest in our managed access to Apache Airflow for data collection and routing, but it's matched by a demand for security and control of the data," said Ry Walker, Co-founder and CEO of Astronomer. "Enterprise Edition solves this problem and comes backed by the support and firepower of our leading Airflow engineers."

In a world of increasing data breaches and commensurate penalties-including the upcoming GDPR compliance deadline-the corporate risk of exposing data to cloud-based data routers is increasing. Big and small enterprises alike are looking for solutions that keep sensitive data private while still leveraging third-party analytics and automation tools.

Data of any velocity: There are valid use cases for batch, near-real-time and true real-time workloads, and data teams need to support all velocities.

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Data anywhere: Proliferation of SaaS silos and internal straddling of cloud/on-prem environments mean that data teams must be prepared to work with data that is anywhere.

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Developer-first approach: Astronomer caters to the needs and desires of modern open-source developers with lightweight tools, a rich CLI and API and no requirement to use an inflexible and confusing GUI.

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Secure Deployment and Monitoring: Secure deployment and flexible monitoring ensure that you get both metrics and alerting out of the box, with the opportunity to plug in your own enterprise monitoring systems.

"A lot of folks wouldn't let us use [Astronomer's] cloud edition for security purposes, so it's been a big deal for us to be able to take ownership of the data and bring everything into our own environment," says Andrew Magliozzi, CEO of Boston-based AdmitHub. "It is an onerous process to get through security approval for partner organizations. It takes months, and since their job is to be diligent with their data (which they should be), Astronomer is letting us move more quickly and reach more people."